You're Never Too Old to Be a Mean Girl
How are we going to wipe out ageism when older women are helping keep it alive?
I've noticed something interesting in the comments on my social media posts.
When some women don't like what I have to say, or apparently don't like me saying it at my age, their go-to insult is some variation of “You're old.”
Well, ladies, you've discovered my secret. I am, in fact, old enough to remember when we had to get up to
change the television channel.
But here's what fascinates me: Some of the women using my age as an insult are older women themselves.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Old women putting down old women for being old.
You can't make this stuff up.
And it raises a question I've been thinking about: How are we ever going to eliminate ageism when some of its
most enthusiastic participants are the very people who should be fighting it?
When Did Being Old Become an Insult?
Let's start with the obvious question. What's wrong with being old?
I mean, it's not a club you have to audition for. You don't need a membership card.
You don't even have to apply. If you're lucky, you get there.
Yet somewhere along the way, we decided that aging was a character flaw. Something to conceal, apologize for,or desperately fight against.
Especially if you're a woman.
Men get distinguished. Women get told to keep their hair long enough to cover their necks.
Men get more interesting with age. Women are advised to dress appropriately, cut their hair,
stop chasing younger men and maybe consider a nice cardigan.
Men are allowed to be eccentric. Women are expected to be sensible.
And God forbid a woman over 60 should wear something fabulous, go dancing, start a business,
travel alone, date or express an opinion that someone doesn't like.
Suddenly, there's a chorus of people eager to remind her that she's too old for whatever it is she's doing.
But why are we accepting the premise that age makes any of those things inappropriate? And even more importantly, why are women helping enforce it?
The Mean Girls Never Graduated
Remember middle and high school?
There was always someone ready to make you feel inferior because your clothes weren't right, your hair wasn't right, you weren't popular enough, or you didn't belong to the right group.
We assumed we'd outgrow that nonsense.
Some of us did.
Others, apparently, just traded their schoolyard insults for Facebook comments. The mean girl who once told you that your jeans were ugly now tells you that you're too old to wear them. The girl who thought she was better than you because she was popular now thinks she's better than you because she looks younger.
And the woman who spent years trying to fit in may now be the one telling other women to stop standing out.
You're never too old to be a mean girl.
But here's the part I find particularly interesting: When an older woman uses age as an insult against another older woman, what exactly is she trying to accomplish?
Is she hoping to establish that she's not that old?
Is she reassuring herself that she's still young enough to matter?
Or has she simply absorbed the message that older women are less valuable and decided to pass it along?
Whatever the reason, the result is the same.
She's reinforcing the very prejudice that will be used against her, too.
We've All Been Sold the Same Bad Deal
For generations, women have been told that their value is tied to their appearance, their desirability, their youth and their ability to please other people. And because youth is temporary, we've been handed an impossible assignment: Spend the rest of your life trying not to look like you're living it.
Buy this cream. Color that hair. Hide those wrinkles. Dress younger, but not too young. Act your age, but don't look it.
It's exhausting.
And it creates a particularly nasty little trap.
If we believe that being old is bad, then we have to find ways to distance ourselves from old people. Even when we're becoming old people ourselves.
We can be the cool older woman. The young-at-heart older woman. The woman who doesn't look her age.
Anything, apparently, except a woman who is simply her age and perfectly comfortable with it.
And when another woman refuses to play along? When she wears the outfit, says the thing, goes to the restaurant alone, or starts doing something new at 70?
Well, she makes the rest of us confront the possibility that the rules we've been following were never rules at all.
Sometimes, it's easier to criticize the woman breaking the rules than to question why we followed them.
Ageism Isn't Just Something Young People Do
It's tempting to think of ageism as a problem created by younger generations. We point to employers who won't hire older workers, advertisers who ignore older consumers or people who assume a woman over 65 can't possibly understand technology.
Those are real problems.
But ageism isn't always that obvious.
Sometimes it sounds like a woman telling another woman she's too old to date.
Sometimes it looks like an older woman mocking another woman's clothes.
Sometimes it's the assumption that a woman who wants to make new friends, travel, dance, fall in love
or reinvent herself must be having some kind of late-life crisis.
And sometimes it's as simple as using the word old to shut someone up.
We need to stop pretending that ageism only counts when it comes from someone younger.
You can be a victim of a prejudice and still help perpetuate it.
Women are not automatically immune to sexism because we're women. And getting older doesn't automatically make us allies in the fight against ageism.
We have to choose to be.
Here's a radical thought.
What if another woman's confidence didn't threaten us?
What if her red lipstick, short skirt, new boyfriend, solo trip or second career had absolutely nothing to do with us?
What if we stopped measuring ourselves against women who are younger, older, thinner, richer, prettier or living entirely different lives?
What if we let women be women without appointing ourselves the unpaid supervisors of their behavior?
You don't have to like everyone's choices. You don't have to agree with everyone's opinions. And nobody is required to be nice to someone simply because they share a birth decade.
But if your criticism relies on the idea that someone is less worthy of respect because of her age, you're not challenging ageism. You're participating in it.
And if you find yourself using another woman's age to diminish her, perhaps it's worth asking yourself why that particular insult feels so satisfying.
What does it say about how you feel about your own aging? That's not a comfortable question. But it might be a useful one.
I'm Not Interested in Proving I'm Not Old
Let me be clear about something. I'm not trying to convince anyone that I'm young. I'm not trying to win a contest against women half my age. I'm not trying to pass for 45 and I don't need anyone to tell me I don't look my age.
I know how old I am.
What I object to is the idea that my age should determine what I'm allowed to do, what I should care about, how I should dress, or whether my opinions deserve to be heard.
I'm interested in living a life that continues to surprise me. I'm interested in learning new things, meeting interesting people, having experiences, and doing things I haven't done before.
And if someone doesn't like that, they're welcome to scroll on by.
But don't tell me I'm too old.
Too old for what, exactly?
Too old to be curious? Too old to be funny? Too old to be ambitious? Too old to change my mind, change my life
or change my lipstick?
I'll decide what I can and cannot do. And I don't need a committee to approve the decision.
The Revolution Starts With Us
We talk a lot about wanting the world to treat older women differently.
We want to be represented in advertising. We want employers to value our experience.
We want people to stop assuming we're irrelevant, technologically challenged or past our expiration date.
We want to be seen.
But we can't demand that the world stop diminishing older women while we diminish one another.
We can't insist that age is just a number and then use that number to humiliate someone else.
We can't tell younger women to embrace themselves while telling older women to know their place.
And we certainly can't dismantle the rules that limit us while volunteering to enforce them on other women.
Change doesn't begin when every young person suddenly develops a better attitude about aging.
It begins when we stop cooperating with the idea that getting older makes us less worthy.
It begins when we stop using age as a weapon.
It begins when we let other women live without making their choices a referendum on our own.
And it begins when we recognize that every time we use old as an insult, we're helping make the world a little
less welcoming for the people we're all becoming.
Including ourselves.
You're never too old to be a mean girl. Just try to come up with an insult more original than you're old.
I'm old enough to expect better.
Make it stand out